


orion swung southward

by bigspoonnoya



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst and Humor, Character Development, Coming of Age, Eventual Smut, First Time, Future Fic, Grief/Mourning, It's a great day, M/M, Slow Burn, for being sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 12:17:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10277756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigspoonnoya/pseuds/bigspoonnoya
Summary: Yuri is shit at dealing with his emotions, especially sadness. Then Otabek returns to his life and forces him to confront a world of feelings he'd stuffed away.





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> this fic takes place after nikolai has passed away (i know, i know, i'm sorry) and yuri is doing a terrible job handling his grief, when otabek reappears to talk to him about their ~past~ and yuri has to open up.
> 
> it will have smut in the final chapters and i'm guessing will be around like 25-30k words... so SHORT, for me, for a multichapter. chapters should be around 5k words.
> 
> this fic is set five years in the future so yuri is turning 21 soon. and viktuuri have a BABY DAUGHTER.
> 
> enjoy.

Yuri Plisetsky leads a noisy life.

He is always being fussed over—coaches, choreographers, sports therapists, nutritionists, representatives from the RSF and the National Team. There are reporters and there are fans, there are interviews and events, there are photoshoots and visits to children’s wards. “It’ll calm down eventually,” Viktor told him a couple of years ago, after he took home his third Grand Prix medal in three years. At that point, it was one gold, one silver, one bronze. Now it’s three gold, one silver, one bronze; the last two years have seen Yuri at his best.

Viktor’s advice was, as always, unsolicited. “Give it a decade. You’ll grow old and stiffand your young beauty will fade, and people will lose interest, and you’ll retire to coach the next generation’s Russian champion.”

“I’m not you,” Yuri had growled. He was only half-grown, then. Just turned nineteen. Still a boy.

He would never forget the way Viktor laughed in reply. “Of course you are. You just don’t see it yet.”

Yuri doesn’t hate the noise, because hating the noise would be hating his success, everything he worked for. The louder it is in his life, the better he’s done for himself. He doesn’t hate the noise. Doesn’t, doesn’t, doesn’t. Shouldn't. Can't.

 

 

 

Yuri lies on the locker room floor, feet elevated on a bench, numb from the ice wraps on his ankles. It smells of cleaning solution and old equipment down here, and his back hurts from the tile, but he doesn’t move to make himself more comfortable. Shoved into a messy bun, his hair presses painfully on the back of his head. The sanitized fluorescent overheads scrub the inside of his eyelids. They hum, too. Incessantly. He throws his arm across his face for some actual darkness, if he can’t have quiet.

Somewhere out in the hallway, voices are audible. They grow louder. The door creaks open, and a single set of footsteps taps across the tile. Yuri feels his mouth twist into a snarl. He doesn’t move his arm.

“Shall we talk about it?”

In his current mood, Viktor’s voice makes him want to punch concrete. Usually it just makes him want to punch drywall. “Fuck off.”

“You pay me a great deal of money not to fuck off.”

“I’m not doing that quad. It’s shit. Shit program from a shit choreographer.”

“I haven’t seen you explode like that since Yakov announced his retirement,” Viktor says lightly, as if he hasn’t heard Yuri’s complaint. He does that, just—ignores shit he doesn’t want to hear. Yuri clenches his teeth. “You startled me. You also startled the class of juniors who were touring the rink, but I keep a number of signed headshots around to smooth things over in such cases.”

If only _guilt_ could sway Yuri from his rage. It never had and it never would. He keeps his eyes hidden behind his arm, keeps himself buried in darkness. “I told you to fuck off.”

A little sigh, and then, “Let’s discuss the quad.” Like that’s supposed to be some kind of peace offering.

Yuri sits up and opens his eyes in the same movement, and the sudden white light puddles his vision. He has to blink to make out the shape of Viktor, seated on the bench beside Yuri’s icing ankles, with his hands folded neatly in his lap. Yuri spits out the first thing to pop into his head: “You need a shave. You look homeless.”

Viktor smiles a glossy smile and scratches his five o’clock shadow. After three years of coaching, his skin is thicker than steel against Yuri’s jabs. “In a house with a young child, you get to shave or you get to eat. This morning I was hungry.”

“Then you’ve been hungry a lot lately.”

Viktor chuckles. It’s too easy for him. “What is your issue with the quad?”

“I don’t—fucking need it, the program’s got a high enough difficulty without it and it’s too early to even make a difference.” And he’d flubbed it twice in practice since Nationals, though he doesn’t mention that, just lets it—suck on the back of his brain like a leech.

“Hmm. Remind me, when we sat down to talk about what you wanted for your short program, what did you request?”

Yuri’s lip curls. “Something that could break the world record.”

“Ah, yes. Whose world record is that?”

He imagines bringing his foot down on Viktor’s crotch as hard as he can. “Mine.”

“Right, right. And I’m sorry, you know my memory isn’t good—the choreographer who created this routine to beat your last world record—the previous routine he created for you, how did it do?”

One day, he thinks, he _is_ going to kick Viktor in the balls. One day soon. “It won gold.”

“Where?”

Yuri glares at the ceiling. “In PyeongChang. The Olympics.”

“Of course,” says Viktor, tapping his temple. “How silly of me to forget. He made you an Olympic gold medalist.”

“But that was three years ago—”

“Are you saying he’s lost his touch?”

“Maybe so. What’s he done in three years, anyway?”

Viktor pouts. “Oh, quite a lot! Been a good father to our daughter, a loving husband, a very good cook…” The look on Yuri’s face is enough to change Viktor’s strategy. He purses his lips. “I will talk to Yuuri about your issues with his quad tonight. If you’re lucky, I can persuade him to come to the rink for practice.”

The news doesn’t calm Yuri’s spitfire, but he manages, “Fine.”

“But I caution you against dismissing the routine entirely. Yuuri’s programs are excellent—better than his teacher’s, though I struggle to admit it. He got you gold once and he can do it again.”

One of Yuri’s favorite recent thoughts returns: _fucking Beijing_. Two months away, it’s all the interviewers are asking about, but Yuri can’t seem to keep it in the front of his mind. After ten years of cycling through train-compete-recover, his focus on the next event has faded into second nature, muscle memory. It’s there, the competition, whichever one it is. It’s three months then a month then a week away. Doesn’t really matter what they call it, or who else will be there, not when Yuri is the best in the world and has been since he was fifteen. The only two men who have ever defeated him are now his coaches and choreographers. _Are you excited about the Olympics?_ the reporters ask. Yuri answers, flatly, _Are you excited about going to work in the morning?_

“Yuri.”

He glares sideways. Viktor is watching him, the lines around his eyes and mouth softening. “What?”

“Are you all right?” Viktor’s voice softens too. Makes it sound like he’s talking to a child.

“Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

“As I said, it’s rare to see an explosion of… quite that volume, from you.”

Not easy to argue that when Yuri can’t actually remember any of the shit he’d said, because he blacked out from rage, and every epithet in the dictionary came spilling out of him. He knows he swore a lot. He knows he tried to take off one of his skates and hurl it at Viktor. He knows it happened because he flubbed that fucking quad, _again_. “Just fix the jumps,” he snaps, swinging his legs off the bench so he can start removing the ice wraps.

Viktor stays quiet, letting Yuri deal with his ankles in relative peace. Then, “Would you like to come on holiday with Yuuri and I?”

“ _Fuck_ no.”

“Are you sure? We’re taking Ana to Paris. I’ve been teaching her bits of French.”

“Why the hell do you think I’d want to go on holiday with you and Katsudon and a three-year-old?”

“First of all, Ana is five. Second—go by yourself if you must,” Viktor sighs. “But I think you may need a holiday.”

“I don’t.” Yuri gets to his feet and throws his locker open with a bang.

“As your friend and your coach—”

 _“_ I don’t!”

That shuts Viktor up for a while. Yuri throws his street shoes to the floor, shoves them on. His hands shake slightly as he wrapsa scarf around his neck and pulls on his coat.

Behind him, Viktor says, “I know you don’t want to talk to me about it.” _You’re right, I don’t,_ an inner voice seethes. “But you must talk to someone.”

Yuri slams his locker shut. His chin trembles, but he can’t tell if that means he’s going to scream again or… cry. He’d rather scream. Crying is—not for him. “I said I was fine. Fuck off.” It comes out in a rasp, because he isn’t, but Viktor isn’t so stupid he can’t hear that he shouldn’t push anymore.

Viktor sighs tremendously. “All right.” Yuri watches out of his periphery as his coach gets up and walks backward toward the door. “But it’s okay if you need to take some time off. To grieve.”

“No it’s not.”

“You know, in my experience, you can skate through pain only once you’ve admitted to feeling it.”

Viktor leaves him with that thought. It sits in the space he vacated by the door, staring Yuri down, like the condescending bastard who uttered it. Yuri can’t focus long enough to stare back, so he grabs his backpack and storms out.

 

 

 

That night, he falls asleep on the couch with the space heater on and wakes up soaked in sweat, a cat on his chest. When he inhales he gets a mouthful of fur and thinks for a moment he must be dying, suffocating.

Once the shock of continuing to live has worn off, he flinches hard, and the cat takes off. He yanks the heater’s power cord, and it shuts down with a mechanical sigh. The flat’s chilly interior sinks back into silence. Yuri inhales deeply. It’s quiet, then a siren blares in the street. So close.

He finds his phone stuck between cushions. _Messages_ (14).

It’s three in the morning, but he passed out around eight, and he’d have to be up at five anyway to jog to the rink. He gets up and cooks himself plain chicken and rice. Posted above the stove is a table of caloric values and target intakes for each meal. He scrapes food splatter off the paper while the food cooks.

While he’s eating, his phone lights up again. Another message, probably someone in a different timezone. Yuri doesn’t reach for his phone.

 

 

 

“Sleep all right?”

Viktor only asks because he knows the answer is _no_. So Yuri doesn’t feel the need to dignify his inquiry with a reply. “When’s Katsudon getting here?” he grunts, knee to his face in a stretch. He’s been awake what feels like forever, and normally he’d be itching to get out on the ice already—but he can’t find that in himself today. Without it there’s an airy abscess in his chest.

“Any moment,” Viktor chirps.

Yuri releases his leg from the stretch. Something in his hip pops. He exhales, ignoring the sidelong stare Viktor gives him.

Viktor’s attention snaps to the rinkside doors when Yuuri comes in; he squeals in delight at the sight of the little girl clinging to Yuuri’s hand and dashes over to greet them. “Hi Papa,” Ana cries. Yuri continues moving through his stretches.

Viktor sweeps the girl into his arms and starts blubbering stupid terms of endearment, shit that doesn’t even make sense, like _my apple_ and _my bear._ He spins her around and she giggles, shrieks. Yuri stares out at the rink, blind to the whole ridiculous display, until Yuuri catches his eye with a wave.

Yuri is loathe to admit it, but he wishes Yuuri were around more. He’s way less annoying than Viktor, even if he hasn’t got any coaching experience. Yuri didn’t get why they’d decided Viktor would be the one to keep working while Yuuri stayed home with the kid, but he isn’t going to _ask_ , or it’d seem like he cares about what goes on between the two of them. And he doesn’t. Or, he doesn’t want them to think he does.

He still sees Yuuri often enough, and Ana too. Ana looks nothing like either of them—why would she, they’d adopted her from an orphanage when she was one or two or something like that—but she does look like the poster child for Russian youth, cherry-red cheeks and dimples and natural brunette curls. Viktor (because Yuri knows it’s Viktor’s doing, he _knows_ ) dresses her like a living doll, lots of lace, and a long red coat with a matching cap. It’s cute but weird. As a family, they’re cute but weird.

“Ana and I are going to have a skating lesson at the other end of the rink while you and Yuuri work,” Viktor announces, then plants a kiss on his daughter’s cheek.

Yuri snorts under his breath. “Thank god.” He launches himself out onto the ice to warm-up.

Yuuri joins him a few minutes later. He moves like he’s still on the ice everyday—or maybe that’s just how Yuuri likes to remember him. Because if Yuuri’s still skating, Yuri is still sixteen or seventeen, still new to Seniors, still aching with hunger rather than feeling starved.

Yuuri smiles at him. “I heard you have a problem with my short program?” At the other end of the rink, Viktor is leading Ana around in circles. Her skates are neon pink.

Yuri folds his arms across his chest. “I want to get rid of the first quad. The Salchow.”

Yuuri’s expression doesn’t change, probably because he and Viktor rehearsed this conversation last night. “Why?”

“Don’t need it.”

“Even to beat your record?”

“I can do it without it.”

“That’s ambitious.”

Yuri shrugs.

Yuuri clears his throat, skates a small circle while he thinks, and then pauses to face Yuri again. “You’ve never asked to change a program this late in training.”

“That’s not true—”

“To lower the difficulty, instead of raise it?”

Ah. Fuck. Yuri bites down on his comeback.

Yuuri tilts his head. “I’m not saying we can’t change it. It’s just not like you to ask.”

“Well, I’m asking. So take it out.”

“You know, I don’t agree with Viktor on everything,” says Yuuri. Gently, too gently. It angers Yuri—he hates being coddled. Yuuri must know that by now. “But I know he brought up it to you, and I have to say, I think taking some time off—”

“Shit, what’s with coaches who want me to stop skating?”

The gentleness falls out of Yuuri’s voice. “We’re saying this because we want you to _keep_ skating. For years, not months. We don’t want you to run yourself into the ground.”

Yuri snaps his skate against the ice. “What does that even mean?”

“The fact that you don’t know what I’m talking about is a sign that you should listen to me, Yuri.” Yuuri slides a little closer, and lowers his voice. “You can hit a wall in skating. It’s psychological, even more than most athletics.”

“I’m the best skater in the world,” says Yuri, through clenched teeth. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you think it means something it doesn’t. You think that it’s about—fortitude, and not sensitivity. But a coach’s job isn’t just to look after you physically, we have to make sure you’re in good emotional shape, too.” The word _emotional_ makes Yuri cringe. Yuuri can see that, and he forces his way into Yuri’s line of vision. “You’re not as good of an actor as you think you are, okay? Skip the European Championships.”

Yuri swallows hard. Skipping the Europeans… it’s not like he’d been looking forward to it. “What about Beijing?” he murmurs, glancing over to where Viktor teaching Ana how to twirl.

“We… we can talk about Beijing. If you don’t have to worry about Europeans, you can take a couple of weeks off now, then go to half-days of training…”

The image of a half-day flashes through Yuri’s head. “No.” An extra five hours, to do what? Sit in his apartment with the television on in the background while he stares off into space? Or is he supposed to spend that time mourning, lighting candles and chanting or some shit?

This is why he never bothered grieving—what the fuck does _grieving_ even look like? Everyone keeps telling him he needs to grieve, but he can’t just sit in a church for two hours and walk out with it ticked off his list. So he keeps doing what he’s always done, running on a treadmill. Not going anywhere, but if he stops moving, he’ll surely fall.

“I’m sorry, but we’re at the point where you don’t get to say ‘no’ anymore.”

Yuri narrows his eyes. “What?”

“Yesterday, in front of twenty teenagers, you cursed out your coach in Russian, English, and Japanese—I don’t even know how you know so many threatening phrases in Japanese? I know I didn’t teach you.” Yuuri shakes his head. It’s horrifying how fucking _fatherly_ he sounds. “Viktor withdrew you from from the Europeans this morning,” he says flatly. “We’re benching you.”

“ _Benching_ me—”

“Yep. In fact, right now—” Yuuri skates around behind him and starts pushing him toward the side of the rink. “—you’re going to get off the ice, remove your skates, and I’m going to drive you into town for some food.”

“You—bastard!”

“And once you leave the rink today, I’ve told security that you’re not allowed back for two weeks.” _Banned from the rink for two weeks._

“That’s bullshit,” Yuri spits, struggling against Yuuri as much as he dares with the kid nearby. “You can’t just fucking decide that for me, you’ve got no right, _neither_ of you—”

“It’s done, Yuri.” They reach the edge of the rink and Yuuri nudges him in the back. Yuri finds himself staring down at the iceless ground like it’s a ledge, and he’ll be jumping off a cliff if he steps down, now. “Come on,” says Yuuri, going gentle again. “You won’t die if you don’t skate for a couple of weeks. Trust me.”

“Do I have a choice?” Yuri asks, or rather hisses. And then he jumps.

 

 

 

“You want me to come inside and make you something to eat when we get there?”

Yuri’s stomach gurgles unpleasantly at the thought. “No. Just drop me off and leave.”

Yuuri sighs and starts the car. Yuri slumps further down in the passenger seat. He keeps himself wrapped tightly in his coat, determined to spend the ride home staring out the window, not engaging with Yuuri at all.

“I have to run an errand,” Yuuri announces as they pull out of the parking lot. “It’s on the way, but it’ll only take a second.”

Yuri grunts. There’s no reason to argue over it—what’s he got to rush home to? The cats. Plain chicken and rice. His space heater. Pornography, maybe? Though that sucks too, nowadays.

Yuuri leaves the car running while he runs into a shop. Yuri isn’t curious enough to peek out at the sign. He sinks lower in the seat and punches some of the radio presets, to see if he can find anything that has actual words.

When Yuuri climbs back into the car, he brings a cold rush of wind and a heavenly scent with him.

Yuri knows it right away. He knows the brown paper bag with the grease stains. He understands the look Yuuri is giving him, holding the bag out to him, his eyes warm and kind. The smell of meat and pastry wafts through the sedan.

Yuri can’t help the reaction that seizes him. It’s visceral, like a gag. He throws open the car door and stumbles into the sidewalk, desperate to get away from that smell.

He can hear Yuuri shouting at his back as he takes off at full speed, running from the car: “Yuri… Yuri, I’m sorry—” The concrete is wet from a freezing rain, and his trainers slip on the ice several times before he finally loses his footing. He goes down hard on his knees, scraping both his palms so they’re red and raw. The pain makes his eyes sting. It’s the pain, it must be the pain.

 

 

 

Yuuri picks the dirt out of the wounds in Yuri’s palms over the sink in his flat. The cat sits on the counter watching, her tail flicking in rhythm, like the hand of a watch.

“I really am sorry,” Yuuri says, dousing the scrapes in rubbing alcohol. Yuri sneers to cover the pain. “I didn’t think… you’re more fragile than I thought you were.”

“I’m not fragile.” Indignation swarms Yuri at that word, _fragile_. He may look fragile but he’s never felt it.

“Of course.” Yuuri ducks his head. “I just meant… um. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Whatever.” Yuri starts to dry his hands on the nearest dirty dish towel, but Yuuri grabs his wrist and directs him to the paper towels instead.

“I stuck the pirozhki in the fridge, in case you do get hungry…”

“Fine.” Yuri turns away. It’s his way of saying, _leave now_. And Yuuri gets it: he edges toward the door, even if he keeps talking too.

“I’m sorry about this whole two weeks thing, too. But it’s… I think it’ll help. Maybe you could go visit your mother in Moscow. Visit his grave.”

Funny how Yuuri just _assumes_ he and his twirling trollop of a husband can keep Yuri Plisetsky off the ice for two weeks. He has no idea what he’s in for. Yuri smiles to himself.

“Have a good night, then,” says Yuuri. The front door opens and closes. Yuri is alone again; he grabs the brown paper bag from the fridge and drops it into the garbage.

 

 

 

He didn’t think they’d physically remove him from the premises. But now, sitting on the curb outside the rink, disheveled from struggling against the security guards, he has to accept that—for the first time in recent memory—Viktor’s bite had equalled his bark.

Indeed, Viktor looked on while the guards dragged him out of the front lobby, cheerfully saying, “Every guard scheduled for the next two weeks knows you’re banned from the premises. Have a good holiday, Yuri! Remember to continue your off-season exercises!”

“Motherfucker,” says Yuri to himself, and he hops to his feet, stomping the curb. His stomach grumbles faintly: he took the bus to the rink first thing after waking, no breakfast, still in his sweats.

Well, fine. Maybe he won’t get back in today. But there’s still tomorrow.

He starts walking. He doesn’t really know where he’s going, just that he can’t go home. Going home would be like—giving in. He has to stay restless.

He walks until the streets shift from apartments and office buildings into shops and restaurants. The look of Saint Petersburg, so different from where he grew up in Moscow, never ceases to set him on edge. Everywhere you turn there’s some palatial masterpiece of nineteenth century architecture. It’s like tramping around an endless museum, and Yuri fucking _hates_ museums.

There’s a sports shop with a decent stock of skating stuff nearby, so he makes his way in that direction. He keeps the hood up on his jacket and his head down; he’s been recognized in public one too many times to run the risk of showing his face, or worse, his hair. People always know him by his hair, which falls to his waist when he lets it down, and eats up half an hour every morning to keep the rats nests out.

Passing a storefront, Yuri catches his reflection in the shiny glass exterior. His eyes flash from beneath the dark shelter of the hood. He catches the name of the shop, grunts under his breath. For the second time in two days, he feels he is standing on a precipice, looking down. His footing wobbles as he’s pushed forward by a strong breeze. In reality, the air is damp and heavy, threatening rain, but in his mind there’s a strong wind. The kind that can bowl you over, or fill you up.

Yuri shoves open the door to the shop.

Forty-five minutes later he emerges, hood down on his jacket. The rain has started, a drizzle, cool on the back of his neck. He could swear his head weighs less than it did an hour ago.

The last time his hair was this short, he was a kid. Twelve, maybe? He runs his fingers through it absently while he walks down the street, feeling how it _ends_ , so much sooner than he’s used to. How there’s so much less than there used to be.

The hairdresser knew him. She didn’t check, just glanced at him and the blonde curtain running down his shoulders. The look in her eyes was familiar—sometimes strangers touch his hair like it’s a national hero in and of itself. “You don’t need to call anyone first?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“It’s my hair,” he’d said. “Do it.”

He buys shawarma from a street cart and eats it on his way to the sports shop, looking people in the eye as he walks, daring them to recognize him. But no one does. At most he gets a glare from a young mother. She pulls her baby close to her chest.

He’s shocked to find the sport shop nearly empty—he’s always had to go straight from training if he needed something, and fell in with the rush of commuters. Parents picking up items for their kids after work, young men on their way to football games. Today, in the late morning, the only people in the shop are the employees, and neither glances at him as he slinks through the aisles toward the skating equipment.

He turns, and there’s a life-sized cardboard cutout of— _him_ , in his outfit from the last Worlds, holding a bouquet of flowers and a gold medal. The image features an inset of his signature black blades with a caption: _Yuri Plisetsky says, “Matrix Elite is the blade of choice.”_

“I never said that,” Yuri mutters. He glances around: no employees in sight. He picks up the goddamn cutout and tries turning it to face the wall, only it’s harder to handle than expected, and he ends up folding the cardboard so his fake torso flops toward his fake feet. “Fuck.” He kicks the stupid thing in frustration.

“That’s vandalism.”

Yuri stiffens, but wheels around, ready to curse someone out—someone or anyone, really, because he’s got a chip on shoulder the size of Moscow itself—

But he stops. The swears stall in his mouth.

He’s smacked with the feeling of suddenly, unexpectedly seeing a person you haven’t seen in years. The astonished pause, lips parted, saying— _could that be them? Have I imagined this?_ Yuri’s jaw hangs loose. He kicks the cutout away from him without looking.

“Hello,” says Otabek Altin, not even slightly put off by Yuri’s gaping, because why would he be? When had he ever been put off? Once there’d been a fire in his home rink, and he’d texted about it matter-of-factly in the middle of a conversation about Four Continents ( _I think small fire has started. BRB)._

“What are you doing here?” says Yuri, with urgency. He doesn’t quite know what to feel, how to act.

“I went looking for you at the rink and they said you were banned.” There’s no judgment in Otabek’s voice, but Yuri bristles anyway. The word _banned_ makes him want to chuck a blade at someone’s (Viktor’s) face. “I thought about where I’d go if I were banned from the rink.” Otabek reaches out to touch a box of skates on one of the shelves. The gesture is odd but affectionate—like Otabek himself. Yuri’s cheeks feel warm. “I’ve been texting you,” Otabek adds.

“Shit. I haven’t been…” Yuri digs in his pocket for his phone. The slew of unanswered messages has doubled since the last time he checked, and it can’t just be Otabek trying to contact him.

“Your hair.”

Yuri swallows. Otabek is the first person to see it. The first one to know. Otabek, who he hasn’t seen since—

“Also, I think you have food on your face.” Otabek touches his own chin to show where, and Yuri quickly wicks away the stray glob of grease. The fucking shawarma.

“Why were you texting me?”

“It looks nice. Your hair.” Yuri struggles with the compliment, glancing away. Otabek says, “I was coming into town and hoping I could see you. Now, I’m here…”

Out the corner of his eye, Yuri watches Otabek watching him. His friend—if you could still call them that—has grown out his undercut and wears his hair pushed off his forehead. Under his leather jacket is a thick wool knit sweater in navy blue, a good color on the tan of his skin. Maybe there are a few more lines around his eyes, but he’s the same Otabek. Yuri thinks it must seem bizarre to Otabek how much he’s changed—his hair, new height, the baby fat melted from his face—when Otabek just stayed the same. Yuri was seventeen, when—the last time they saw each other. Still a child.

And he’s not a child anymore. Far from it. He lifts his head, and turns to meet Otabek’s eye.

“How’s your ankle?”

“Better. I’ve been back on the ice for six months. I’ll be back for the Grand Prix.”

Yuri nods shortly. He’d had to read about Otabek’s injury in a press release—it came a couple months after they’d stopped talking.

“Can I take you to lunch?” Otabek asks.

“I already ate.”

“Coffee, then? Or tea?”

That question is much more than a dinner invitation, to Yuri. It’s a _let’s talk_ , a tentative offering. It’s Otabek reaching out. He even smiles a little, while Yuri stares at him. Yuri’s instinct is to shrink away like an unfriendly cat, but Otabek doesn’t make dishonest offers. You can see it in his eyes when he tries to lie. Or, Yuri can see it. He isn’t sure how it is for the other people in Otabek’s life. Though it’s generous to consider himself among those people—he hasn’t been in Otabek’s life for two years.

“I don’t have anything else to do,” Yuri says, shrugging just enough to let Otabek know that this isn’t a big deal, that it doesn’t mean anything, that he’s still angry. He’ll always be angry.

His passive aggression hits Otabek and bounces off harmlessly. “Okay. Did you need to buy something first?” he asks, looking at the cardboard cutout Yuri destroyed.

“No—I was just browsing.”

“Okay. Then let’s go.” Otabek leaves without waiting for Yuri to follow.

 

 

 

Walking with Otabek in silence down a crowded street. It has the same nostalgic power as the smell of pirozhki—that is, it leaves him vaguely nauseated.

What’s funny—in the tortured, ironic sense of that word—is how he used to look forward to time with Otabek. How it had been so easy. Every major competition gave them an excuse to be together, and Yuri’s heart ached and more in the days and weeks in between. He didn’t even know what it _was_ to feel giddy; he’d never been giddy in his life. And then there was a text from Otabek. Just the name of a restaurant in whatever city, and a time, and a _see you soon_. And he’d grin at his phone, regardless of where he was, what he was doing, who he was with.

For the longest time he thought friendship was just that wonderful. He’d never experienced it before—how would he know how to distinguish it from something else? How was he supposed to _know_?

Otabek points out a little shop advertising coffee and donuts. “Here, this looks fine.” They go in, Yuri claims a little table, Otabek orders them two coffees and a pastry. The pastry sits on the table between them, uneaten, like a peace flag planted in No Man’s Land. Yuri hasn’t said a word since they left the sport shop.

“It’s been a while,” Otabek says, finally. He sits forward with his elbows on the table. Yuri notices stubble along the line of his jaw.

“Yeah.”

“How have you been?”

Yuri blinks. The question makes him angry. He wants to smack it away. “My grandfather died,” he says, flatly.

Otabek’s eyes widen, sympathetic surprise, and it’s honest, too. “I am sorry to hear that. I know how much he meant to you.”

Yuri’s face goes red, which is stupid, this is so stupid. He glares at his coffee cup. Agreeing was a bad idea, was asking for trouble.

“You’re still angry with me, aren’t you?”

Oh, fucking _fine_. Otabek went looking for a fight. Yuri can give him that. His gaze snaps up from the coffee. “Are you trying to beg for forgiveness or something?”

Only, fighting Otabek is like fighting a wall. Yuri asks his question, and for a minute Otabek just _sits there_ , staring at him. He always liked how Otabek’s coolness forced him to deescalate—here was someone he could feel calm around, finally—but when Otabek is the one Yuri’s angry with, it renders him useless. He punches the bricks and they don’t budge. The only thing he gets out of this is busted knuckles.

Otabek opens his mouth and says, slowly, “Yes. I am. For forgiveness.”

It’s not what Yuri expected. “You are?”

Otabek nods.

“I’m not fucking doing that.” Yuri slumps down in his chair. _Stupid_. His face is still warm.

Otabek taps the side of his coffee cup, rolls his neck, blinks at the ceiling. You don’t want to wonder what’s going through his head, not when you’re angry, but it’s impossible not to guess. “I think you have more you want to say to me about it,” Otabek tells him.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I hurt you.” The truth of those words is like a kick in the gut. Otabek doesn’t struggle to get them out, but Yuri struggles to hear them. _Hurt me_. “Tell me what I did.”

“What are you, some kind of sadomasochist?”

“Unless it would hurt you to tell me, I’d just be a masochist. And no.” Otabek shuts his eyes for a half-second. Yuri almost misses it, but it’s a lot of emoting, for him. “I need to know. I don’t like making mistakes.”

“So rejecting me was a mistake, huh?” Yuri shoots back, a little too loud for this public café. Otabek keeps his voice low.

“It was three years ago, so I can’t know that. But I know I lost my friend, so—something was not right.”

Yuri leans back in his chair, onto the two back legs, arms over his chest, glowering across at Otabek. He knows he can’t resist the open invitation to yell at someone he’s been angry with for years, but he hates that, too. Giving Otabek what Otabek wants, even if it’s good for them both, defies the childish pettiness to which he clings.

He lets the front legs of the chair come back down, and leans over the table, showing Otabek the true intensity of his glare. Yuuri likes to joke that his glare could set shit on fire, and while he always hated that joke, right now he’s kind of hoping Otabek will burst into flames.

“You kissed me back.”

Otabek does it again—closes his eyes, just for a moment.

“I know you did,” says Yuri, digging in his heels, leaning closer. “And then you pushed me away. Coward.”

“You’re right.”

Yuri feels the sneer on his face tremble. “I was seventeen and you made me feel like shit for liking you.”

Otabek’s brows pinch together. “I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t—”

“Does it matter how you mean it? You wanna know how you hurt me. I thought there was something there, and you ran away.” _And now I think I’m crazy every time I make eye contact with an attractive person._

“That’s why I ran.” Otabek’s eyes rest on the tabletop. “Because there was something there.”

There’s a thousand things Yuri could say to that. In his head he hears them all at once, a cacophony of screeched replies, but the fact is—he can’t speak. A shiver crawls down his spine, he grits his teeth, he grasps for the will to shout something rude in Otabek’s face.

But he can’t do it. Because, truthfully, he’s surprised to hear his old insecurity shrugged off with a simple confession. Shocked speechless, it seems.

If there _was_ something there—could there still be?

The thought is too much for Yuri. So he takes a page from Otabek’s book: he pops to his feet and rushes out of the café, without a word for a goodbye.


	2. chapter two

Yuri is too proud to sprint, and Otabek has longer legs. It takes him a block to catch up. He latches onto the back of Yuri’s jacket.

“I’m sorry, Yuri.”

Yuri attempts to shake him off, too violent for this spot—a wide alley of shops, pedestrians only. In the early afternoon on a weekday, the crowd of bystanders is thin, but populous enough Yuri’s anger disturbs the air. People are looking at them. And he doesn’t care about that, he’s used to the stares. But if some asshole with a smartphone gets video of him freaking out in public, Viktor (who has Google alerts for the names of everyone in his inner circle) will see it. Yuri could have time added to his dumbass suspension. He can’t risk that.

So he inhales deeply and jerks his sleeve out of Otabek’s hand, but he doesn’t attempt an escape. _Look normal_. He pulls up his hood, a reflex when he’s feeling overexposed. “I don’t care that you’re sorry.”

Otabek’s lips twitch. He must not know what to say to that, since he came here to deliver this grand apology. Shutting him down should feel satisfying to Yuri—Otabek _hurt_ him, though not visibly, and not in a single blow. Together they were happy and Otabek tainted every moment of that with his cowardice; it wasn’t a sucker punch as much as a thousand little scratches, and one, the kiss, deeper than the rest.

But it doesn’t feel good to scratch back. Not like it should. Everything’s so fucked up now he can’t even find pleasure in revenge. All he can think is how much pain they’ve shared, and how he’s sick of hurting. Maybe he’s growing kind? _That_ would be fucked up.

“There are things I need to say to you,” Otabek manages, after a long silence.

“Why should I care?”

Otabek is steel—no flinching. “I was hoping you’d consider letting me be your friend again.”

“Give me a good reason.”

His head tilts an inch to the side, thinking. “Because.” A cool wind sweeps hair into his eyes. “You were right about us, once. I want to tell you how right you were.”

Yuri’s jaw clenches painfully. He feels his head start to shake. Shoves his hands into his pockets. “Why do you always know the right thing to say? What is that shit?” The longer they talk, the longer he has to look at Otabek’s face, the more his heart—his chest—hurts. What started as a tickle in the sport shop is aching, now. _Because I hate him_ , he lies inwardly.

“I’ll tell you if you let me keep talking to you.” Otabek smiles his funny smile—he doesn’t laugh like other people do. He’d once told Yuri that when he was a child, no one laughed in his house, so he never learned how. But he has a special smile for humor, mischievous and coy. Yuri knows it instantly. A version of laughter.

He turns on his heel. “Not here.” There are still a couple of loiterers watching them. “Follow me.”

 

 

 

 

Yuri slams his feet up the steps to his apartment. Otabek’s footsteps are lighter, quicker. Viktor used to laugh about things like that when he saw them together: on the outside, Otabek seemed dark and moody and hard-hearted, and Yuri light, gentle, pale, Russia’s proverbial fairy. But in personality they were much the opposite. “Someone’s mind-swapped an angel and a devil,” Viktor would say.

If Yuri had known what was to come, he might have answered that Otabek was no angel, and while Yuri might harden his heart, he couldn’t render it unbreakable.

“When did you move in?” Otabek asks, looking around at the luxe but impersonal interior of Yuri’s apartment.

“A year ago.” Yuri busies himself getting food for the cat. She watches Otabek from the armrest of the sofa, tail twitching.

“You haven’t decorated.”

“Yeah, well, I’m barely ever here.” With competitions every month in the regular season, Yuri is out of town constantly, and when he's in St. Petersburg he spends sixteen hours a day at the rink. Only the tiger-print throw on his sofa and the pile of fan-gifted cat plushes in the corner of his bedroom make the place uniquely his. All his medals and trophies are in a display case at the rink for tourists. No one had ever offered to let him take them home.

Otabek stands by the door with his hands clasped behind his back. After a couple of minutes of getting stared at, Yuri realizes Otabek is waiting on him. “Just go sit down,” he says, gesturing toward the couch. “You don’t need permission. It’s not the fucking imperial palace.”

Otabek’s nod is weirdly short, suggesting he might disagree. Yuri doesn’t know what to do with that so he ignores it. Otabek sits in an armchair, but only on the very edge, as though he doesn’t think it polite to be comfortable. The cat continues staring at him, even with Yuri tapping her food dish.

“What’s her name?”

“Cheburashka.”

Otabek funny-smiles at the cat. “Ah. I see it.”

“Come eat,” Yuri barks. She gives him a withering look before obeying. 

The room is quiet but for the sound of the cat eating. Otabek’s dark eyes are trained on the sitting area rug. Yuri hesitates to go and sit with him—the kitchen island and the cat provide a natural barrier between him and the prospect of talking about the past. He tugs on his new short fringe to pass the time.

Now _he’s_ the coward. 

Gritting his teeth, Yuri stomps over to the sofa, where he reclines, one of his legs dangling off the armrest. “All right. Start talking.”

Otabek lifts his gaze to meet Yuri’s. It’s stupid, how he looks. His whole… face situation. Yuri curls into the couch cushions, glaring. 

“Do you remember,” Otabek begins, “when I told you about that ballet class? When…”

“Of course I remember.” You don’t forget the sunset over Barcelona. You don’t forget a story like the one Otabek told that day.

“You were better than me at ballet.”

Yuri pulls a face. “Really? That’s where you’re going with this?”

Another dig that rolls off Otabek harmlessly. “When did you realize you were different?” he asks, more intense than makes Yuri comfortable.

“What does that mean, _different_?”

“That you were gay.”

Maybe Yuri focuses so much on Otabek’s unflappability because he flinches out of his skin at every other thing Otabek says. He doesn’t even say the word _gay_ in his head—he pretends he’s nothing, instead. That part of his life doesn’t matter. And it’s largely Otabek’s fault that he thinks this way. “I don’t know.” He doesn’t measure the hostility in his tone. That answer is halfway to a lie; he knows he started figuring it out right around the time he and Otabek became friends.

Otabek’s head careens to the side, a bird considering a worm. “It’s too personal of a question?”

“Uh, yeah? No shit?”

“Then I’m sorry.” Otabek sighs a tiny sigh. “I struggled with it. For a long time. I have always thought, because you were the one who…”

He glances up at Yuri, like he wants him to fill in the blank. But Yuri will hear him say it. “Who what?”

“Who kissed me.” Otabek clears his throat. Yuri grins, not quite genuine. “I thought it had been easy for you. You were younger. You didn’t hesitate.” Otabek grinds his fist into the palm of his opposite hand. He doesn’t look up. “You’ve always outshone me in everything, Yura.”

Yuri refuses to let the warmth in his cheeks distract him from his anger. He sits up, leaning toward Otabek, his voice almost a hiss. “So what? You’re here to tell me that you didn’t _mean_ to reject me, that you were just so spooked by the thought that you might wanna fuck me, you had to run?”

Otabek’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t answer. That’s as good as a yes.

Yuri flops back into the couch cushions with a snort. “Great. Good to know. Really puts the last two years of not letting people touch me in perspective.”

“I should’ve explained,” Otabek murmurs.

“What, instead of walking out and ignoring me for two years? Letting me feel like I was a freak, for—” Yuri is starting to boil, now, and he can no longer sit back. He can’t lounge around brushing Otabek off like it’s nothing, because… it isn’t nothing. “Yeah, maybe! Maybe an explanation would’ve _helped_.”

“I’m sorry it took me this long—”

“What part of ‘I don’t care that you’re sorry’ do you not get?” Yuri feels himself getting to his feet. Otabek doesn’t move except to bow his head slightly, so Yuri is just—shouting down at him. “I don’t care! I don’t give a shit about apologies! I keep saying that, and you’re still here, explaining why you’re a dick. I know you’re a fucking dick, so stop telling me. What do you _want_ from me?”

Otabek lifts his head. His eyes are closed. “I wanted to tell you that I still have feelings for you.”

Yuri barely hears this, he’s ready to say something mean. And then he catches it. “What?”

“I have since we were children.” Even when Otabek’s eyes flutter open, he won’t look at Yuri. It’s maddening. _I just called you a dick, and now you’re saying this. Just fucking look at me_. “Or I always felt… drawn to you. I don’t know when it turned into this.”

Yuri’s mouth pops open, but an ache in his throat prevents him from speaking. And what would he say?

“I should never have left. I should’ve stayed and… kissed you.” Otabek touches his thumb to his bottom lip, as if thinking about it. “I wish I had never given you a reason to hate me.”

“No.”

That gets Otabek to glance at him, even if the word escapes Yuri involuntarily. His heart smacks the inside of his chest. The pain is as bad as it’s been.

Otabek repeats, “No?”

“Fuck this.” Everything surfaces in a second. Months of buried emotion breaking through, making him nearly sob when he says, “Fuck you.” He can no longer see Otabek’s face clearly—because he is crying, he realizes. The tears blur his vision. “I’m not doing this today. I can’t. Shit.” He storms past Otabek in the chair, toward his bedroom, shielding his stupid face. He can no longer tell what is anger, what is shock, what is loss.

He slams the door shut behind him and falls into his unmade bed, wrapping himself around one of the pillows. Here he can cry unseen. He tries not to think about whether or not Otabek can hear him. He tries not to think about Otabek at all—whether he’ll leave, or stay outside, or try to come into the bedroom.

As Yuri lies there, staring at the blank ceiling, his breathing growing steady, the tears gradually drying up, it becomes obvious to him that not everything he’s feeling right now is Otabek’s fault. He’d overreacted. Like when he screamed at Viktor in the rink, only… worse. And he didn’t think that was possible.

God. Shit. This is fucked. His whole life is just, fucked. He’s sick of it. Tired—exhausted, suddenly. He closes his eyes, and drifts off a few minutes later, the afternoon sun sneaking in through the blinds.

 

 

 

 

Yuri wakes up to someone tapping his shoulder. Eking open his eyes, he sees the sun has gone down; the only light in his room pours through the open door. He can make out the shape of Otabek beside his bed, holding something.

The lamp on the bedside table flickers on. The thing in Otabek’s hands is a tupperware.

“I brought you soup.”

Yuri reaches for the carton and the proffered spoon. He doesn’t need a moment to know he’s hungry. One waft of the schi broth and he could eat a zoo.

Otabek just stands there while Yuri inhales his first spoonfuls. He’s in his coat and scarf and the soup is still warm, so he must have just returned from getting it. His awkward standing is annoying enough that eventually Yuri rolls his eyes and smacks the foot of the bed.

“Just sit.”

Otabek perches on the edge of the bed, facing Yuri, who takes a gulp of soup straight from the container and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand.

“Sorry for—” Otabek is already shaking his head. “Let me fucking apologize, okay?” Yuri snaps. “I’m trying to be somebody who can have a conversation without screaming. Just once.” He rubs his throat. “I’m losing my voice.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Otabek gives him a warm smile, satisfying like chocolate.

“Uck, _stop_ ,” says Yuri, recoiling.

“Stop what?”

“Being nice to me. And smiling. It’s weird.” He downs a third of the soup in another couple gulps. He reaches the bits of beef and cabbage at the bottom and starts munching. His feathers are ruffled, but he feels better than he did before. It’s just a surface disturbance, the way he feels about that smile.

Otabek puts his mouth behind his hand. “Is this better?”

But he smiles into his eyes, too, so it’s not. Yuri shrugs and looks away.

Otabek says, “I accept your apology.”

“Are you expecting me to accept yours, too?”

“No.” A simple answer. Sounds honest.

Yuri lets out a small exhale; it borders on a sigh. “I’ll… probably accept eventually. I’m not angry with you. I mean—I _am_ angry, what you did was shitty.” He pokes a piece of fatty beef swimming at the bottom of the soup. “Just not as angry as I seemed before. It’s—stupid.”

“I understand.”

“You don’t. But that’s fine.” Suddenly Yuri is full and bloating. He abandons the soup carton on the bedside table, then flops back onto the bed.

Otabek’s smile has faded. “I want to help you.”

“Oh, yeah, everyone _wants_ to help.”

“What are they doing wrong?”

“Fuck if I know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, so how am I supposed to tell people what I need?” Yuri’s gaze coasts along the familiar rivets of his bedroom ceiling. “I didn’t go to his funeral.”

He glances over at Otabek, looking for a reaction. But Otabek isn’t one for reactions.

Yuri slowly sits up. “I told Viktor and Yuuri I was going and I took the day off, but I didn’t even go to the airport. I stayed here. I watched a movie.” His heart races. He hasn’t told anyone that, until now—he has no one to keep his secrets. Or, he didn’t.

Otabek asks the question Yuri has been asking himself for months: “Why didn’t you go?”

“I was scared. Of seeing the body.” His throat closes around a laugh—a laugh that’s more disbelief than humor. “It’s so stupid. It’s the stupidest thing.”

“If you don’t see the body then it’s like he’s not really dead.”

Yuri’s strange manic smile dies on his lips. “Yeah.”

“See,” says Otabek, glancing sideways at him. “I do understand a little.”

“You got one thing. Don’t get excited.”

Otabek smiles again, remembers he’s not supposed to, and clamps a hand over his mouth. Yuri chuckles—a true, certifiable, happy laugh. The sound of it startles him. He swallows hard.

“So you’re in love with me?”

Yuri can’t keep a good moment alive, apparently. He can feel the conversation nosedive back into awkwardness.

“Ah,” says Otabek, stiff. “Not exactly what I said.”

“Then I don’t get what you said.” Yuri pulls his knees to his chest. “What do you… what am I supposed to do?” Maybe his bed isn’t the best place to talk about this, though it does give him a funny feeling in his stomach. Otabek is hot—has always been—and he likes Yuri, a sad, horny virgin searching for distraction. Yuri can’t _not_ think about it.

“I could fall in love with you. It wouldn’t be hard.” Otabek spies Yuri scooting down the bed toward him. “Do you mind if I sleep on your couch?”

Yuri freezes. “On the couch.”

“Tonight is the first time I’ve seen you in years, Yura.” Otabek reaches out and palms Yuri’s cheek. Yuri’s blood runs cold, then scalding hot. “I want to do it right this time.” Otabek drops his arm, and Yuri’s hand flies to the spot he touched. The skin feels the same but it seems like it shouldn’t. There’s a note of uncertainty in Otabek’s voice when he asks, “Does that make sense?”

It does and it doesn’t—on the surface, sure, Yuri gets not wanting to fuck up again, but he can’t fathom why Otabek would confess like that if he didn’t want something to happen between them. He must know that immediacy is Yuri’s forte. Yuri doesn’t _take things slow_. He’d love to pass the next couple of weeks scratching a years-old itch—it’d be more fun than his current plans (moping and throwing darts at a picture of Viktor), and he might even return to the ice with new mojo. After two weeks, who fuckin’ knows, who fuckin’ _cares_ —Yuri can’t see past getting back to work. It’s easy to push their past aside when he sees an opportunity in Otabek’s arms.

So fuck Otabek and his self-control. Yuri grits his teeth. “Fine. Take the couch.” But if he can’t pass the time making Otabek stomp all over his virginity, he’s sure as _hell_ going back to the rink tomorrow morning. He flops back to the bed, pulling the covers over himself. “I’m going back to sleep.”

“Ah. Okay,” says Otabek softly. The bed creaks when he stands up. Yuri refuses to look up, but he hears footsteps shuffling toward the door. “I’ll see you in morning.”

“Yeah.”

A couple more footsteps and the door clicks shut. Alone again. It’s quiet, until a police siren blares in the street beneath his window. He shoves his head between two pillows and sighs.

 

 

 

 

His eyes fly open at four fifteen. It’s time.

He’d slept in his jeans and they left marks along his legs and hips; in the darkness he changes into jogging pants and a hoodie, something fast and comfortable.

He creeps out of the bedroom. The human shape on the couch makes him jump, but then he remembers: Otabek. Yelling. Soup.

He tiptoes over to the coffee table to retrieve his phone and keys, careful not to disturb his visitor. He doesn’t know how his stubborn attempts to get back on the ice will go over with Otabek. They’d talked about a lot of shit yesterday, but hadn’t touched on Yuri’s skating woes. If Otabek agrees with Viktor and Yuuri about him needing a holiday—that’s a major turn-off.

Otabek makes a small sleepy sound and Yuri mouths a swear. But Otabek doesn’t stir. A bluish glow from the skylight overheard shrouds his face, and sleep softens his hardest features. The change is striking enough Yuri pauses to stare. He’d never really noticed how guarded Otabek’s expressions are, or how he always seems slightly perturbed. Now the line between his brows—which Yuri assumed was permanent—has gone smooth, and his chest rises and falls in small easy sighs. Seeing him like this makes Yuri feel… _weird_ , and calm. Like maybe he should have insisted Otabek slept in his bed, not to do anything, but so he could listen to him breathe.

In the sidewalk outside Yuri’s apartment, a motorcycle sits covered in a tarp and thin layer of snow. Yuri sneers—he knows the signs of Otabek coming to stay.

 

 

 

 

“What have you _done_?”

This is the question that sets the mood for the morning—it’s the first thing Viktor says when he sees Yuri, and he mutters it under his breath as he drags his skater from the security holding area. Jaws drop as they weave through the rink complex. Other skaters and team reps and coaches and rink staff, they stare.

Viktor kicks open the door to his office and shoos Yuri inside as if he were flighty livestock. Yuri can’t help smirking—he’s made it inside the rink. One step closer to getting back on the ice.

Yuuri is sitting at the desk, flipping through a magazine. His eyes widen at the sight of Yuri.

“I _know_ ,” Viktor hisses.

“Yuri, you…”

Viktor sticks his hand into Yuri’s hair. “What’s left of it? Two inches? What are we supposed to do with two inches?”

“Why don’t you ask Yuuri?” says Yuri, baring his teeth in a laugh.

Viktor looks at him incredulously, then at Yuuri. Yuuri explains, “It’s a joke about your…” He makes a vague gesture.

Viktor gasps and swats Yuri, who ducks.

“Yuri, what happened?” asks Yuuri—more civil than his husband, as usual.

“What? What does it look like, I cut my hair.”

Viktor bursts with a question: “ _Why_?”

Yuri has to stare at him for a second while he devises an answer—he hadn’t thought of how he’d handle the hair thing after the initial shock wore off. He was in it for the revenge, really. “Why not?”

Viktor’s eyes bulged in frustration, but he forces a smile. “You didn’t think this was something worth consulting your team on?”

“No.”

“Oh!” Viktor rolls his eyes. “Well, in that case it’s _no problem_.”

“What, are you telling me you got permission to cut off all your hair? Way back in the eighteenth century?”

“Yes! It was part of a—calculated effort to reset my image as a skater.”

This is so weird to Yuri, he can hardly believe it. As a kid, he’d watched Viktor’s first program after he cut his hair, and he remembers being in awe at how _free_ he seemed. As though he’d cut his way out of his cocoon. He imagined Viktor taking a pair of scissors to his ponytail, lopping it all off at once, and tossing his new short haircut happily. But Yuri was young. Only now can he see how silly that sounds.

He tries to defend himself: “I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t banned me from the rink.”

“Oh, so you think _now_ you’ve proved you’re stable enough to skate?”

“You wanted me to cope.” Yuri indicates his hair. “This is me coping.”

“And this is supposed to persuade me to let you back in?”

“It’s supposed to show you that you’re being _stupid_.”

Yuri takes a threatening step forward, but it doesn’t rattle Viktor a bit. He picks lint off his jacket. “If I don’t agree, what will you cut off next?”

“Do you _dare_ me—”

“Stop!” Yuuri springs to his feet, flapping his arms at them. “You’re both being—this is silly. You must see that it’s silly, and we’re being _immature_ ,” he says, more to Viktor than to Yuri. 

“It’s my hair.” Yuri hunches forward, shooting glares around the room. “You can ban me from the rink but you can’t tell me I’m not allowed to cut my own fucking hair, okay?”

Yuuri continues looking deliberately at Viktor, and Yuri realizes he recognizes it: Yuuri agrees with him, and he wants Viktor to back off.

“Of course I can’t,” Viktor sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “But the ban on your skating stays in effect.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Yuri turns on Yuuri, looking for support.

Instead he gets a sympathetic frown. “He’s right, Yuri. Your hair is fine but… you need a break.” _Damn it._

“I took the whole day off yesterday. This is—” He’s so frustrated his sentence turns into a growl. He can’t think of a phrase to sum up how much he hates all of this, how it isn’t helping, how it’s making things _worse_.

Viktor leans back against his desk, tapping his lips like he does when he’s thinking up some bullshit, and staring at Yuri. It sends a chill up the back of Yuri’s neck. “How about this,” says Viktor smoothly. “I’ll make you a deal.” _Shit_. Viktor doesn’t make deals, he sets you up to lose. “Land the quad Salchow that you hate so much, and I’ll let you back on the ice.” He grins widely, like the bastard he is, and extends a hand for Yuri to shake. “No argument.”

Yuuri groans, but there’s no time for his logic or maturity or whatever he wants to call it. Yuri slaps his hand into Viktor’s and shakes.

 

 

 

 

It’s going to feel so good to skate again, Yuri thinks. To feel the cold coming off the ice.

But then he’s lacing up his skates and something is—not right. He dismisses it as nerves, and he’s never had a problem skating through nerves. He doesn’t let little things like that grate on him; once a reporter asked, jokingly, if he was superhuman, and he’d shrugged and said _probably._

That’s what Viktor and Yuri don’t understand. Yuri Plisetsky is more than human. He’s surpassed both of them. It’s time they learned the extent of his resolve—he can overcome anything.

 _Just nerves_ , he insists, as he steps onto the ice, willing away the nagging churn of his stomach. Yuuri and Viktor watch him from alongside the rink, and there are other people looking too. They stare and whisper. Everyone knows he’s banned by now, and they’ve seen what he did to his hair. They sniff out the new development like hungry predators.

Yuri imagines the looks and murmurs running off of him like water, like they’d run off of Otabek if he were in this position. _Be cool_ , Yuri thinks, gliding through his warm-ups. _Otabek would be cool._

He can hear his coaches have a hushed conversation at the rinkside and determinedly ignores them, until Viktor calls out to him. “Are you sure, Yuri? I don’t want you to do anything foolish.”

“What, have you realized I’m going to nail it?”

“I worry how it’ll affect you psychologically if you fall.”

Yuri pauses his warm-up to shoot a glare in Viktor’s direction. Condescending bastard. “Don’t you have anything else to worry about? The signs of aging, maybe?”

Viktor sighs and rubs the back of his head. “Whenever you’re ready.” Yuuri appears to be chewing on his thumb.

Yuri takes another minute to prepare himself. It _does_ feel good to be back on the ice, right? The way he moves when he’s out here is different. Not easier, but he has a power he couldn’t possess anywhere else. His muscles flex with potential energy, the ability to soar and stun, to do something incredible. In the rink he’s alone, and no one can pierce the veil of his skate—everything falls away except the ice and his body and the thin blade that ties them. He can be silent and alone before thousands of strangers when he’s skating well. He’s stronger. He gives two-hundred percent.

Today he feels like he might only be giving a-hundred-and-fifty percent, but that should be more than enough. He’s only got to land one jump, right? If he can throw up that wall between him and his audience, it should come easily enough. He must’ve landed a dozen quads in performance, by now. It’s no sweat. He can’t sweat.

He moves through the program leading up to the jump. Simple stuff, even if he feels a little stiff. Like he’s one beat behind the music, though there isn’t any music playing.

Yuri knows the millisecond he takes off that the jump is wrong. A moment later, he lands with a wobble, and he can see Viktor off to the side shaking his head. The whispers around the rink have doubled in volume.

“Under-rotated,” says Viktor simply. “A triple. A messy triple.”

“I’ll try again.”

Yuuri pleads, “Yuri—”

But he’s already speeding back into the program, too tense, and too determined to stop himself. His breaths come out white and ragged in the rink’s chilly air.

He tries it again. This one— _maybe_. He feels the air catch under him while he rotates. His audience inhales in tandem, he can hear their soft gasp. Hope flashes through him, and that’s the problem: you don’t get excited about a jump until you’ve landed it. The second your concentration falters, even to congratulate yourself, you’ve fucked it up. That’s the easy shit, the kind of thing they teach you when you’re a kid.

Of course the issue isn’t his body. He’s not under-conditioned, not fucking up his form. It’s his fucking _mind_ —it doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. Like it used to. Like it always has.

Yuri doesn’t realize he’s fallen until his shoulder slams the ice. He keeps moving even after he touches down, skidding out of it. He’s seen enough people wipe out on quads to know it looks worse than it feels, which is why he can hear people calling, _are you all right?_

He doesn’t care enough to answer. He doesn’t care enough to get up. He rolls over, and lies on his back, staring at the massive lights over the rink. Someone, maybe Yuuri, skates over and makes him sit up. He mouths _no_ to a couple of questions about pain.

He’s not hurt. His body isn’t the problem.

He gently shoves Yuuri away. “Leave me alone.” He starts clamoring back to his feet, so he can get off the ice and out of this place. He’s nearly there when he locks eyes with one of the audience members and has to stop.

It’s hard to imagine what could possibly make this situation worse, but that’s fine, because Yuri doesn’t have to imagine. He’s got someone watching him with steely eyes who’s taken care of that.

Otabek is waiting for him when he steps off the ice. “What’re you doing here?” Yuri grunts. _He saw me fall. He knows I’m fucking up my skating_.

“I woke up, and you were gone…”

“That doesn’t mean come looking for me!”

“Otabek?” says Yuuri, coming up behind Yuri. “You’re early.”

 _Early._ Otabek only shrugs in answer, which means Yuri has to demand, “What do you mean, he’s early? Early for what?”

Yuuri frowns in confusion. He glances between Otabek and Yuri, and finally lingers on Otabek, who bows his head. “For his meeting with Viktor and I.” Speaking of Viktor, he’s stomping toward them, looking especially ugly.

“A meeting about what?”

Finally Otabek chimes in, though he doesn’t raise his head. “I’m considering making my return to skating with one of Yuuri’s programs.” _Shit._ “And with Viktor as my coach.”


	3. chapter three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am writing this slower than expected, because it turns out grief is emo and tough to handle? wild

Yuri ends that conversation at the rink like he’s ended so many conversations recently: by storming out.

He’s halfway across the parking lot when he hears a voice booming behind him, Otabek’s, almost comically deep. “Yuri—Yuri!” He would rather deal with Viktor in this moment, or better still, be left alone. Otabek wandered back into Yuri’s life to lift him out of darkness—Yuri was going to _forgive_ him—but he’d lied. He’d hidden his true intentions.

It makes Yuri boiling angry. The kind of anger that bubbles and expands until he thinks he’s going to pop. The kind of anger that’s tough to control, that has more than once made Yuuri suggest he see a therapist. And maybe he should, because he’s starting to get sick of feeling like this. The harder he rages, the deeper he plunges into tear-eyed exhaustion when he comes down. The mood swings aren’t sustainable. They’re taking their toll.

Yuri stops running because he gets scared of himself. He’s startled by the brief flash of fear tugging at his heels, like his skate has caught on something. He remembers that sensation from minutes ago, on the ice—the moment before the fall. And if he stops, takes a minute, turns around and looks Otabek in the face… he can catch himself. Maybe.

Jogging to catch up with him, Otabek slips on icy pavement and has to steady himself on a car. “Yura,” he exhales, breath white on the air.

“You’re just calling me that so I won’t notice your bullshit!”

Otabek makes a face at him. He hasn’t quite caught his breath. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means, you—” Yuri turns away, gritting his teeth. “You fucking _lied_ to me.”

“I didn’t lie—”

“You’re taking my _coach_ —”

“He would coach both of us.”

“And what?” Yuri raises his voice. “That didn’t seem like something you wanted to tell me? Why did you _leave it out_ if isn’t bad, huh?” Otabek in St. Petersburg. Otabek at his rink. Otabek with the same coaches, at the same competitions, always there—something he hasn’t been for so long. The two-week fantasy crumbles in Yuri’s hands, and he’s left with—he doesn’t _know_. What does this mean? How do St. Petersburg, the coaches, and the _I still have feelings for you_ add up? And if it’s as obvious as it seems, then—why hasn’t Otabek kissed him yet?

“I thought we’d discuss it later,” Otabek says. It’s a tepid consolation, a bad excuse.

“That’s stupid. How do you not see that that’s stupid?”

“I don’t see a lot of things.” He exhales on the end of his sentence. Yuri remembers how he’d struggled with his apology-confession the night before. _You’ve always outshone me in everything, Yura._

“That’s—fucking true,” Yuri can’t help grunting. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “God. _Fuck_.” He feels his rage waning.

Otabek has always been… not clumsy, exactly, but too straightforward to think of tact. He doesn’t do logic like other people; there’s something in his brain that works differently. Yuri had loved—liked—that about him at one point. They’re both exceptional individuals in their own ways.

Yuri keeps getting mad at the dumbest shit and then realizing he’s a nightmare. And Otabek is willing to wait while Yuri works through it, his patience untested.

Yuri takes a few deep breaths. His blood pressure sinks back into normalcy, or whatever the Yuri Plisetsky version of normalcy is. He couldn’t describe it, not lately.

“I’m sorry,” says Otabek, just loud enough to be heard over the nearby rush of the highway.

“I know you’re sorry. You don’t have to tell me that.”

“But I want to.”

“You’re doing it again,” Yuri groans. Otabek starts to ask what he means, but Yuri cuts him off: “Being nice to me.”

Otabek smiles. Genuinely. That warmth again, like chocolate. “Do you want me to be mean to you?”

“I don’t know! Maybe!” Otabek being mean sounds hot, and Yuri notes that it’s probably fucked up of him to think so.

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Doesn’t seem like it matters if I’m mean to you,” says Yuri under his breath, glancing around the parking lot, but he spies Otabek’s smile tick half-an-inch wider. Ugh. “You’d really leave Almaty?” Otabek had always talked about returning to his home rink as the pinnacle of his career. He was the hero of Kazakhstan, and he wore it as a badge of honor. Even if Otabek hadn’t rejected him, even if he’d stayed and kissed him again like he says he wanted to, Yuri wouldn’t have expected him to leave his city behind.

Otabek looks him dead in the eye. His smile has vanished. “It depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you want me here.”

Yuri chokes on his spit. “I’m not making that choice for you. Are you crazy?” Only Otabek could think that’s a reasonable thing to ask of someone— _I’ll move to another country for you, just say the word._

And Otabek just, _shrugs_. Of all the responses. “Does it sounds crazy?”

“Shit, yes!”

“Then perhaps I am a little crazy.”

“So… you went to Viktor and Yuuri?” Otabek nods. “They didn’t ask you. You asked them.” Otabek nods again. Now the glaring lack of a heads-up makes more sense. It would’ve been one thing if they’d sought Otabek as a client and not told him, but this… no wonder Yuuri had seemed upset when he stormed out. No doubt Yuri will get a phone call from them later today and have to fumble through an explanation.

What’s he supposed to feel, in this situation? Being angry comes easily to him, and he can’t seem to stay angry with Otabek. Not when his intentions are this genuine, not when he says the things he says and looks at Yuri like no one ever really has—as an equal and a friend.

It was simpler when Yuri was just ignoring his problems, suffering in silence. Now they’re all surfacing at once and he’s barefoot on thin ice.

He shoves his hands into his pockets and gives Otabek a solid glare. “Where’d you park your bike?”

Otabek gestures down a row of cars. The sight of the motorcycle stirs some weird nostalgia in Yuri—he hadn’t actually gotten to see it this morning. The winter sun catches the chrome and it glows, treasure-like.

“You got another helmet?” Otabek nods. “Take me back to the apartment. It’s fucking cold out here.”

 

 

 

 

They weave through the patches of traffic clogging St. Petersburg’s streets, the cold air stinging Yuri’s cheeks. It’s freeing to glide past the gridlock and ignore the honking cars. He’s always associated the back of Otabek’s motorcycle with making an escape.

He tries to sit back, at first, holding on only as tight as necessary. But the inches between him and Otabek shrink until it only makes sense for Yuri to wrap his arms loosely around Otabek’s torso. Maybe it’s just that Yuri’s grown over the years, but Otabek seems smaller than he once did. Shorter and less burly. His chest is not quite as wide as in Yuri’s imagination.

They’ve been home a few hours when someone buzzes at the front door. Yuri has alternated between Instagram and fussing over the cat in order to avoid conversation with Otabek, who gets out his laptop and starts to do god-knows-what. He takes one look at the expression on Yuri’s face at the sound of the doorbell and announces, “I’ll get it.”

Yuri hears Yuuri’s voice floating up the stairs: “I’m sorry to come by uninvited—I tried calling but neither of you answered…” He also hears a soft, high-pitched giggle, which can only mean Yuuri has brought Ana along. In the kitchen, Yuri slaps a glob of cat food into a bowl.

Yuuri brings the stink of guilt and his usual nervous urgency into the apartment with him. “Ana, why don’t you sit with Otabek while I talk to Yuri?” He nudges his daughter in Otabek’s direction.

Yuri has never seen Otabek look as panicked as he does when Ana marches up to him. “Are you from Japan?”

“I’m from Kazahkstan.”

“Where’s Kazahkstan?”

Otabek opens his mouth to answer, realizes he doesn’t know how to explain it, and pulls his phone from his pocket. “I’ll show you.”

Apparently satisfied with his choice of babysitter, Yuuri has snuck into the kitchen, using Yuri’s interest in Otabek and Ana’s interaction to get close to him.

“We need to talk,” he says in a low voice. Yuri jumps and narrowly misses elbowing his coach in the face.

“What the hell!” He manages a half-whisper and a half-swear, for Ana’s sake—it might be why Yuuri brought her along. He’s clever like that, in ways Yuri never expects.

“Yuri, we weren’t going to talk to you about Otabek until it was official.” No pleasantries, it seems. “I didn’t know how serious he was about coming here.”

Yuri grits his teeth and pushes the cat’s bowl across the kitchen island. She appears out of nowhere to devour her dinner. “It’s fine.”

“I knew that you two weren’t—wait, did you say it’s fine?”

Yuri refuses to look at him, electing instead to nod slowly.

“An hour ago you ran out of the rink like it was a huge betrayal.” Yuuri leans into his line of vision, and Yuri makes a face.

“I was mad then. I’m not now.”

“Oh.” Yuuri takes a step back, frowning. “Sorry… why the change?”

“I don’t know, I got all mad and now I’m not mad anymore,” Yuri says, harsher than he means to, but he doesn’t like being needled about his reactions. He can’t explain them to other people when he doesn’t understand them himself.

He attempts to end the conversation by moving to the kitchen sink, where there’s a stack of dirty dishes he’s been ignoring. But Yuuri’s gaze follows him, sending a shiver up his spine. They’ve established that Yuri isn’t angry anymore, so why keep pestering him? Even Yuuri’s silence seems fraught with disapproval.

“Do you want to talk about Otabek?”

A sudsy pan slips through Yuri’s fingers and he grunts. Out the corner of his eye, he can see that Otabek is preoccupied with Ana—she’s roped him into a rhythmic hand-slapping game—and it doesn’t seem like he overheard Yuuri’s question.

Yuuri must be some kind of mindreader, because he calls into the living room, “Ana, there’s a playground down the street.” The little girl’s eyes light up. “Otabek, why don’t you take Ana for a walk?”

Otabek’s hesitation is obvious—he’s nervous to look after a child, and he eyes Yuri, too, wanting to stay close. He must realize they’re going to talk about him.

But he can’t argue with Ana when she’s tugging on his arm; Yuri knows this from experience, having been dragged into a dozen games of dress-up. “Let me know if you need anything,” he tells Yuri—in Russian, not English, so it’s hard to say if Yuuri understands. Then he lets himself be dragged downstairs and out of the apartment.

Yuuri no longer has to murmur when he asks, “He’s staying here?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you two okay?”

Yuri hasn’t told anyone what happened between him and Otabek, but no doubt Viktor and Yuuri noticed when Yuri’s only friend suddenly dropped out of his life. Yuuri wouldn’t ask if they’re okay if he didn’t know that they hadn’t been okay for a long time. Yuri shuts off the faucet and dries his hands on the nearest towel. “Sure,” he replies, in a clipped tone.

“Sure?”

“I don’t know, it’s fucking complicated!” Yuri slumps forward over the counter, looking at nothing in particular. “He’s staying here. We’re…” There’s no satisfying end to that sentence. He doesn’t even try.

After a beat, Yuuri says, “We were going to tell you as soon as we could.”

“It would’ve been unprofessional to tell me before the contracts were signed. I swear, I get it. I’m not angry.”

“Yes, that’s true, but…” Yuuri adjusts his glasses, teeth on his lip. “I might have told you if it were anyone other than him.”

For the first time since he arrived, Yuri looks his coach in the eye. He avoids it, usually, when he’s being petulant (which is almost always), but in that moment—he feels like Yuuri has landed a surprise hit on him, right in the soft skin of his belly.

Yuuri extends a hand between them, as if to say, _steady, now_. “I wanted to talk to you about Otabek. And why he wants to come here. I knew there were—complications, between the two of you. We decided we wanted to talk to him before we brought it up with you.”

Yuri glares. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I want you to know that you’re our priority.” Yuri’s stomach clenches. He has no idea what that’s about. It probably has to do with Viktor and Yuuri being the closest thing he has to a proper family, nowadays. “And I wanted to ask you upfront—” Yuuri sighs, shoulders drooping. “How do you feel about Otabek coming to St. Petersburg?”

Is he ever going to get a break from this question? He wants to run outside and scream at the sky— _I get it! It’s my decision! Stop asking me what I want, because I don’t fucking know_.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” Yuuri adds softly. “And you don’t have to tell me what’s going on between you—”

“ _Nothing_ is going on.”

“Yes. Okay. That’s okay.” Yuuri puts such effort into calmness and civility that Yuri misses Viktor for a hot second—if he were here he’d tease Yuri until, inevitably, the truth came out. And that sounds… _good,_ to Yuri. He wants someone to force his realization, so he doesn’t have to figure it out himself. Which is stupid, because if there’s anything he’s learned in the past couple of days, it’s that no one can fix this for him. Only he can do the work.

“He told me he has feelings for me.”

Yuuri’s mouth falls open. Understandable: not even Yuri had expected he’d break the silence this way.

“But he won’t actually… he told me he likes me, and then he asked to sleep on the couch. What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

Yuuri can’t get his mouth shut. If anything, Yuri sees panic in his eyes. Is it that shocking and unfamiliar to see Yuri being emotionally honest? Then again, Yuri has shocked himself. “I… wow. Okay. Wow.” Yuuri continues under his breath, “Viktor owes me money. Wow.”

“Thanks for the great advice,” Yuri grunts, starting to stomp out of the kitchen. He doesn’t know where he’ll go, but he wants to get away from Yuuri. His face is burning.

“No, Yuri! Sorry.” Yuuri throws himself in front of Yuri, pleading. “Do you really want my advice?”

“You’re married and you have a kid and you seem like you’re pretty happy, why wouldn’t I want your advice on this stuff?” Yuri has trouble understanding the expression on Yuuri’s face when he says that. He’s like a billion years old, how has he never thought of this before?

“You’re right,” says Yuuri, to himself. “I’m a romantically successful adult. I married the man of my dreams. I’m qualified to give advice on this.” He looks up at Yuri. “You… did you tell Otabek about your grandfather? Or the quad…”

Yuri slips around Yuuri and heads for the couch. He collapses there with a sigh. “Yeah. He didn’t know about the quad, but he knows now.” Yuri’s shoulder aches where it’d hit the ice earlier that day. He’s going to have an ugly bruise.

Yuuri takes a tentative seat in the armchair—the same place Otabek had sat when they spoke last night. Remembering makes Yuri shut his eyes. “I think if Otabek genuinely cares for you, then he probably wants to make sure you’re—okay, before the two of you jump into anything.”

“Then why’s he talking about moving here? How’s that not jumping into anything?”

Yuuri shakes his head. “I don’t know. Maybe… he wants to be near you. Maybe he really does want us to coach him.” Yuri pries an eye open. Yuuri is smiling. “He’s not perfect. But if he cares for you, and you care for him… I mean, do you care for him?”

Weird, how easy it is for Yuri to say, “Yeah.” His tongue doesn’t fall out of his mouth—it doesn’t struggle to form the simple syllable in answer to Yuuri’s question. He doesn’t feel different in a major way. It doesn’t _hurt_ to admit it.

“But there’s a problem,” Yuuri surmises, squinting at him.

“Yeah, he’s not making a move?”

“Have you asked him why not?”

Yuri sighs yet again, head falling back. He wracks his memory for exactly what Otabek had said last night: “He wants to ‘do it right’ this time.”

For a while Yuuri doesn’t say anything, to the point where Yuri wonders if he’s fallen asleep with his eyes open or something. When Yuri peeks over at him with a frown, he finally clears his throat. “Sorry. I was just thinking.” He sits forward in the armchair. “You know how sometimes, when someone knows you well, they can tell what’s going on with you before you even know?”

“I guess.” Yuri can only think of one person knew him like that, for certain, and he’d skipped his funeral.

“Maybe Otabek senses that you’re…” Yuuri hesitates to finish the thought. Annoying, since Yuri is too exhausted to blow up at him.

“Just say it.”

“He senses you’re in a lot of pain.” Yuri doesn’t feel compelled to argue with that statement—and it sucks admitting he’s miserable but, weirdly enough, pretending he’s not miserable doesn’t feel a whole lot better. Nor is it going to last him, and he’s starting to see that as the end goal—one day in the future, it would be nice to feel normal again. To think about dating. To give a fuck about the Olympics. To want to land that quad Salchow because he’s the best skater in the world, not to make people stop asking if he’s okay.

“He senses that I’m in a lot of pain,” Yuri echoes. “He doesn’t wanna—he thinks I’m not going to get better if we fool around?”

Yuuri purses his lips. “You know, I get the feeling that Otabek doesn’t want to… fool around, so much? From what you’ve told me, he seems—serious, about you.”

“He’s serious about everything.”

That earns a low chuckle from Yuuri. “Yes. And if I were him…” The humor fades from Yuuri’s voice. “I’d be worried that you wanted to use me as a temporary fix.”

Yuri recalls his fantasy of two-weeks in bed with Otabek and shuts his eyes. Hmph. If Otabek had thought—well, if he’d thought that, he would’ve been right. But it wasn’t—it _isn’t_ that Yuri doesn’t genuinely like him. Only, he’d been hurting and wanted Otabek to make him feel better. Which is _bad_ , according to Yuuri. “I mean…” Exhausted with prodding himself for answers, Yuri buries his face in a couch pillow and moans.

“If it’s not like that, then you can explain it to him,” Yuuri offers. “Let him know how you feel.” It’s a helpful but horrifying suggestion, and Yuri is sick of talking, anyway. He kicks the air above the couch and hears Yuuri yelp in surprise.

At the sound of the front door opening, Yuri flings himself off the couch. A red-cheek Ana flies up the stairs into the apartment, straight for her father. “I threw a snowball at Otabek!”

Otabek trails her inside, snow flakes visible on his hair and jacket. “It started precipitating,” he explains.

Yuuri makes some quick excuse about needing to get home before the weather worsens. Yuri doesn’t get a private moment with him before he and Ana leave, and so doesn’t get to thank him for their talk. But he will, he promises himself. He owes Yuuri that much.

Then Yuri and Otabek are alone again.They both know that the conversation which just occurred in this room can and will affect their relationship. For that first moment back together, they stand in the living room looking at one another, completely still, like they’re worried any speech or movement might set off a bomb. Otabek seems skittish. Or, as skittish as he ever seems.

Yuri needs a second to himself, he decides. Yuuri’s advice is too raw yet in his mind. He has to collect himself. “I’m going to take a shower,” he says, and vanishes into the bath. Otabek says nothing in reply.

 

 

 

 

Yuri Plisetsky does not rehearse scenarios in his head.

He’s not a planner. If he wants to say something, he says it. If he feels a certain way, he expresses it immediately. Emotionally speaking, he’s all instant gratification—always has been.

Until now? Surely something like that doesn’t change from one conversation. Because of one person.

But here he is in the shower, mentally scribbling down confessions and scratching them out just as fast. He can’t imagine a version of events where he doesn’t sound like a total doofus. All those _I like you too_ s and _let’s be together_ s, the common language of romance, it would sputter and fail on his lips. So how’s he to say what he means, what he feels? How’s he to reconcile this alien sentiment?

Fundamentally, he’s shit at talking. He’s always found other ways to speak. Through his skating. With his body. But Otabek doesn’t want that. Or, he doesn’t want _just_ that.

He must want it a little, Yuri thinks, dipping his face under the shower head. The temperature is two notches above comfortable; he retreats and shuts off the water. It’s been a good twenty minutes by now. Otabek will start to think he’s drowned.

Yuri wipes a clear patch in the fogged mirror and assess himself. There’s a purple welt on his shoulder, just as he’d expected. He pushes his newly short hair pushed back off his forehead. His chest, all that corded thin muscle, glistens. The shower’s heat has left patches of red on his pale skin.

He wraps a towel around his waist and slips out of the bathroom. His instincts, that’s what he needs. If he listens, they’ll tell him what to do, how to show Otabek what he feels. After all, Otabek _isn’t_ Yuuri, and Yuri—he isn’t Viktor. He refuses to be Viktor, for a lot of reasons. They have to find a language that feels right for them.

Otabek is back in the armchair, laptop out on the coffee table. He glances up at Yuri but looks back to the screen just as fast. _He’s embarrassed_ , Yuri realizes, heat going to his face. So yeah, maybe Otabek’s interest isn’t purely physical, but it can’t be devoid of that either. It’s obvious in the way he’s looking at the computer, over-focused, even though his eyes don’t move across the screen.

Yuri creeps toward him, a cat stalking prey. The air in the living room is too cold for his damp skin, but he can manage it. He looks good like this, he knows it, he feels it. He’s empowered by it.

He steps beside Otabek’s chair. Otabek keeps staring at the computer—all he can do to dissuade himself from looking at Yuri. What does he think he’s hiding by feigning disinterest? He’s already spilled his guts. It’s stupid. He might as well enjoy the access.

And if he won’t take up the offer, Yuri will make him.

He shoves his way between Otabek’s knees, pushing the computer away. Otabek slides back in the chair and stares up at him, his mouth a thin line. He doesn’t seem particularly surprised that Yuri is going this direction.

“Stop pretending you don’t want me.”

Otabek glances away. Yuri is incensed.

He drops forward, bracing himself against the armrests, bringing their faces mere inches apart. Otabek’s lips part. Yuri can feel the towel coming loose at his waist, but he doesn’t care. In fact—an impulse seizes him—he reaches down and undoes the loose knot.

And there he is, completely naked, wet from the shower. Otabek’s eyes stay locked with his, not flickering downward, not for a second. Bullishly stubborn.

“I don’t let people see me like this.” This statement is true in facets. He means naked, yeah, but it’s as figurative as it is literal. Last night, when they talked about the funeral… he was naked then too. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

Otabek shuts his eyes for a moment. This close, Yuri can count his eyelashes, and see the stubble on his upper lip. “Yes.”

Moderately satisfied with that, Yuri straightens up. He can see Otabek’s body relax when he moves away. “So come sleep in the bed with me tonight. You don’t have to touch me if you don’t want.” It takes a lot of self-restraint not to add, _But I sure fucking hope you will_.

In a strange gesture, Otabek pushes a hand through his hair and leaves it there, partly obscuring his face. His eyes are closed again, shut tightly. But when he says, “All right,” he sounds unbothered.

Annoying. What part of _stop pretending you don’t want me_ had he misunderstood?

Yuri does what he does next strictly to prove a point. He knows as soon as he reaches for Otabek’s chest that the move won’t go over well. Maybe one day he’ll stop relying on conflict for progress—he knows it’s a problem, now, at least.

He runs his fingers from the center of Otabek’s chest to his belt. He wears only a thin t-shirt, meaning Yuri can feel how warm he is, and the firmness of his build. Otabek’s eyes flutter open, wide and curious. Yuri’s fingers find the sliver of skin visible where his t-shirt has ridden up.

Yuri makes a grab for his crotch, and Otabek’s curiosity vanishes. Lightning-fast, his hand closes around Yuri’s wrist. He doesn’t get to do more than brush his fingers against the zipper of Otabek’s jeans.

“No, Yura.” But as firmly as Otabek says that, he swallows twice, and hard. Does he think Yuri doesn’t see it? Does he think he’s making this look _easy_?

Yuri clenches his jaw, and jerks out of Otabek’s grasp. “Why not? You want it as much as I do.”

There are a thousand stupid things Yuri expects him to say in response, and he’s ready with an eye roll. But the explanation that falls out of Otabek’s mouth isn’t one he anticipated: “Because I’m not ready.”

“What?” _Not ready_. Yuri is a virgin, and he was ready the moment he laid eyes on Otabek in that sport shop. So what the hell is Otabek waiting for?

“This is new to me. All of it.” Yuri stifles a laugh, because Otabek is clearly trying not to look at the naked body in front of him when he says this.

“What do you mean, it’s new to you?”

Otabek glances up at him, and shrugs. Which suggests he means exactly what he sounds like he means.

Yuri blurts, “But you’re twenty-three.” _Shit_.

Otabek frowns. “You’re twenty.”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“I’m sorry if you expected that of me,” says Otabek quietly, staring at the armrest. Yuri’s stomach sinks.

“No—I mean, I don’t care. You just always seemed…” He recalls what he’d thought when Otabek showed up that day in Barcelona, to save him: _he’s sexy_. And aloof, and mysterious. The world taught Yuri that this meant Otabek could sleep with anyone he wanted; Yuri hadn’t accounted for the possibility that Otabek didn’t partake in the opportunity his looks provided. “I’ll wait.” He suddenly feels stupid being naked, so he grabs the towel from the floor and covers himself. “I just thought—never mind.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry? There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

Otabek smiles. It’s nice. Not mysterious or aloof or anything like that. This version of Otabek is highly preferable, he decides.

“I’m gonna go watch videos in bed until I fall asleep. Come in whenever you’re done out here.”

He gets a little nod in reply. Yuri heads for his bedroom. Before he settles down, he peeks back into the living room, and watches Otabek fly out of the chair and into the bath, and snickers to himself.

 

 

 

 

Yuri is nearly asleep when he feels the bed dimple beside him.

He can smell soap and shampoo, meaning Otabek is freshly showered, something that instantly appeals. He heaves a sigh as he settles in, and Yuri rolls over to look at him. They exchange sleepy smiles. Yuri feels himself begin dozing off again.

“Hey.”

Yuri pries his eyes open. His only greeting is a guttural noise.

Otabek has snugged against his pillow, but he’s wide awake. “I had a thought.”

“Yeah?”

“We should go to Moscow.”

 _Go to Moscow._ In the haze of sleep, Yuri takes a long time to parse what that means, what Otabek is really trying to say. And still he can’t wrap his head around it—go to Moscow, why? “What?”

“To visit the grave.”

“Oh.” Otabek wants them to go to Moscow together, to visit his grandfather’s grave. Hard to say if Otabek is strategic in asking now, when Yuri is half-asleep, or if he’d just lucked out. But either way, he avoids Yuri’s knee-jerk refusal, his unwillingness to even consider it. With his defenses down, Yuri simply thinks— _yeah_. _All right_. _Let’s meet this head-on._ “You’re going to come with me?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go,” Yuri mumbles, rolling onto his back. “As long as you come with me.”

“Of course I will.”

“Then let’s go to Moscow.”

That’s the end of their conversation. When Yuri wakes up the next morning, he has the vague memory of a kiss pressed against his hair, and a whispered _good night_ , but it’s indistinguishable from his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> i update frequently, and you can follow me on twitter ([@bigsponnoya](twitter.com/bigspoonnoya)) for update times.


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